Course description

Course lay-out

Bio-Informatics is one of the courses that the student could choose during these four weeks, the other course was medical knowledge technology. Bio-Informatics is a fast developing interdisciplinary research area which focuses on computational management of biological data. New techniques become available and by means of these new techniques and research activities biological data become rapidly available (the Human Genome Project for example). The computer supported processing and analysis of this data leads to more insight into medical-biological processes. These insights could lead to dramatic improvement of medicine. The specialisms bio-informatics and medical informatics are closely related. However only in this course attention is paid to bio-informatics.

 

During the first week students participate in the course 'Introduction to Bioinformatics' in which the student acquires insight into bio-informatics by means of lectures and practicals. The last three weeks the students form groups of two or three people and choose a project with consent of the coordinator. During this project the students study a bio-informatical topic in depth. The project can be a small research in which a hypothesis is tested and research questions are answered or give a very detailed description of a proposed project which cannot be completed in four weeks.

 

During discussion meetings the student will report on their progress and the content of the project will be discussed with fellow students. Lecturers could provide interesting articles to support the project of the students. Students have to find additional information themselves (literature, interviews with experts, etcetera). The final result of the project has to be presented and written down in a report.

 

Besides discussing the progress of the projects, attention is also paid to elaborate on articles in the area of bio-informatics. The student has to study the specific articles in order to be able to participate in the discussion. Each time a student will lead the discussion meeting.

 

Educational goals

The purpose of this course is to give a more complete picture of bio-informatics and let the student study a bio-informatical topic in depth. Skills will be trained; such as leading a discussion, preparing a discussion, writing a report and oral presentation.

 

Involved departments

• Bio-Informatics
• Clinical Informatics

 

Evaluation

Evaluation of the course and assignments

I choose this course because I found the subject bio-informatics more interesting than medical knowledge technology. Unraveling the DNA and the cell processes appeal to me. Furthermore the lecture methods were also more appealing.

 

The first week was a long week, after the holidays almost 40 hours of lectures in English. However it was a perfect introduction to the area of bio-informatics and the English language was a good practice. The second week was very useful to get familiar with several topics in the area of bio-informatics. In preparation of the presentations you had to read some articles. During the presentations three topics were discussed; medical informatics & bio-informatics, e-bioscience and GRID. Afterwards the articles were discussed in the group. I learned a lot more by discussing about the topics, than when I had just read the articles about the several topics.

 

The English language turned out better than I expected. At the final presentation it was somewhat difficult to revert to the Dutch language. It was nice to discuss about the areas of medical informatics and bio-informatics; whether or not they will merge, or is it possible that they will ever merge, or that one area will vanish, etcetera. The course was not difficult, but the workload was high. However I learned a lot and I liked the subject. I suggest other medical informatics students to choose this course instead of medical knowledge technology.